Dear Guelph-Humber Faculty and Staff:

As we approach the winter break, we wish to thank you – our outstanding faculty and staff – for all your hard work during this atypical year.

We have appreciated greatly the efforts everyone has made to ensure that our students have the best experience possible amid unprecedented challenges posed by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, both during the fall semester and into winter 2021.Your willingness to adapt to new educational and work environments and your ability to reimagine teaching and learning have allowed us to continue to deliver high-quality courses and programs to our students. Thank you for your many contributions and your dedication.

We also want to update you on key developments. Gabrielle Bernardi-Dengo, head of finance and administration, will retire at the end of this month. Gabrielle joined Guelph-Humber shortly after the G-H partnership began, and we appreciate her many years of service and dedication.

The current Guelph-Humber interim leadership structure will remain as we continue to focus on COVID-19. Brenda Whiteside, interim director (administration and student services), will oversee the three units that reported to Gabrielle: finance and administration; academic and technology services; and web services. We will be developing a job description and recruiting for a replacement for Gabrielle in the new year.

Again, we are deeply grateful for your hard work, your commitment to excellence and your contributions to Guelph-Humber’s accomplishments in 2020.

We wish you a joyful and restful holiday season and look forward to continuing our important work in January.

The Office of Sustainability is putting the Sustainability Spotlight on Nivedita Lane, Manager, Community and Partnership Development, with Community Outreach and Workforce Development.

“I’m an adult educator and a community developer, and the path that brought me here is interesting,” says Nivedita Lane.

Nivedita completed a double-degree concurrent program at York University with the intent to become an educator within the secondary school system. While also working part-time at local service agencies and volunteering in the community, Nivedita quickly internalized that education is more than just the things that happen within a classroom, “education is something that is experiential, greater than four walls, more than the clear-cut boxes and streams, and something that is truly lifelong.”  

Nivedita says that her career choices “formalized a commitment to breaking down silos in education, and creating alternative pathways for people to access education and training and decent work as they needed it. It also helped to me to fully appreciate that partnership building and collaboration are integral to bringing about systems-level change necessary for transformative social and economic development.” 

When asked what sustainability means to Nivedita, without hesitation Nivedita replied saying, “I think that I ultimately come back to the idea that sustainability is about balance and wellness. Sustainability is really about people being well, the earth being well and understanding the connections between all things.”  

To learn more about Community Outreach and Workforce Development's sustainability initiatives, read the feature story here. 

As we begin the Winter 2021 Orientation season, the Student Life Orientation Team within Student Success and Engagement invites all Humber faculty and staff to browse our new and engaging online content available for incoming students to access starting this week. We encourage you to visit our website and support us with promoting our content, programming and events to incoming students throughout the rest of December and January.

Note: Starting this week, new students have been sent emails pertaining to the below elements through a multitude of channels. We thank our campus partners for also spreading the message online through social media, calling campaigns, webinars and more.

1. Virtual Meet Your Faculty Sessions (January 12- January 14) - Students will have the opportunity to meet virtually with their program's Faculty on Blackboard to interact with their new peers and our volunteers and learn more about their academic expectations specific to their program.
2. Orientation Website (Available for the entire academic year) - Supports students, families and friends with understanding specific resources available to them at Humber College.
3. Orientation Blackboard Module (Available for the entire academic year) - Supports students with navigating Humber College's student services and resources, finding community, and more. For students who complete this module, they have the opportunity to win several prizes, including $1,000 towards their tuition.  
4. Welcome Month Programming (January 18 – February 5) - Students can attend events throughout the month hosted by our many campus partners, access virtual workshops, download digital swag, and join our First-Year Experience (FYE) program to be matched with an upper-year mentor (students can sign-up now).

We look forward to welcoming all new students online!                                                 

Should your students have any direct questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out to Kimberly Daniels, Coordinator Orientation & Student Life Programs (kimberly.daniels@humber.ca ) or Christina Alcena, Manager, Equity & Student Life (christina.alcena@humber.ca) directly. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the many inadequacies and inequities in education systems. Indeed, when education transitioned to remote teaching and learning, it revealed a gap in instructor preparedness to support digital learning. A considerable demand for professional development in the use of information and communication technologies was reported among some of Humber’s partner institutions. However, the need is not just a stopgap response to cope with the pandemic. Much more than that, digital technologies could go beyond improvising solutions during a crisis by bridging the time and space and so bringing the entirely new lens of what – how – where - when people learn. This has created an excellent opportunity for the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences and Innovative Learning to strengthen the partnerships by supporting its partners in closing this gap with a key FLA strength – teacher training expertise.

In response to this demand, on December 4 and December 11, 2020, Stephen Allen, Director, English Language Centre hosted two "Network Teaching and Learning" workshops that helped our partners' faculty further enhance their teaching skills in an online environment. The events were greatly received with more than 100 participants from five universities in Japan, the Philippines, and Vietnam. In these workshops, the participants had opportunities to understand essential areas to build a Community of Inquiry with students, be familiar with the ways humans can learn in online environments and how these are facilitated with digital technologies. The participants were also introduced to open educational resources they can use either online or in-class.

"It was such an informative and useful workshop with hands-on advice. The presenter not only identified the attributes of teaching online but also demonstrated different methods and technologies to teach and engage with students in an online setting", recounted Kim Thu Hoang, lecturer at the Academy of Policy and Development, Vietnam. Through the sessions, Stephen showcased different technologies to create a vibrant and engaging forum where participants could interact, share their ideas and contribute to the sessions. "There were multiple points I felt very informative and inspirational for my teaching. I also liked the way Stephen used different tools such as a presentation with a lot of visual material, break-out room discussion and live-interactive survey, which made us all actively participate in this workshop", shared a faculty from Kansai Gaidai University.

"Technology does not just change ways of teaching and learning; it can also elevate the role of teachers. However, technology can never replace the teacher in the learning environment; that is the reason why we call teaching art, not a science", emphasized Stephen Allen when concluding the workshops.

The two "Network Teaching and Learning" workshops represent a step further for the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences and Innovative Learning to continue its mission of supporting the teaching community in the effort to remain current, practical, and creative in the classroom. They also highlighted Humber's Internationalization Strategy by creating a mutually rich exchange of culture, ideas, and expertise between the faculty. "The workshop filled with new perspectives and teaching resources was something of real value to our teaching activities", related Dinh Phuoc Vo, Dean, School of Foreign Languages for Economics, University of Economics, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

The success of the workshops is inspiring follow-up collaboration opportunities, with diverse opportunities for FLA to openly share and engage and support our partners' knowledge building.